NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday December 8
Welcome to the Saturday edition of NBA DFS Picks and Pivots, a fantasy basketball column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for this slate of DFS action!
For those of you finding us for the first time, the concept behind NBA DFS Picks and Pivots is to give you a first look at the day’s NBA DFS slate, including our top picks, plays and pivots, using FantasyDraft pricing as a reference to help you build your best fantasy basketball line-up and win big.
Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate.
Friday’s NBA DFS winning GPP scores pushed well over 375 points on FantasyDraft as we had four players including LeBron James, Jimmy Butler and DeMar DerRozan go for 60+ fantasy points including Russell Westbrook who led the slate with 72 fantasy points with another triple-double including 4 steals against the Chicago Bulls.
Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate. The goal of this article is to dig through the slate, highlight our top plays and help you identify the best slate strategy across your NBA DFS line-ups.
As always, we will look to update our final lineup thoughts throughout the day on our twitter account @FantasyCPR so make sure to give us a follow for all the late breaking lineup news.
Without further ado, let’s get into today’s slate!
NBA DFS – Saturday Night NBA DFS Slate:
Before we dive into tonight’s NBA DFS action – we have ANOTHER FREE ROLL from our friends at FantasyDraft who are giving away three $25 Pick and Roll tournament tickets to the top three finishers in this daily free roll each and every day. Please show these guys some love as they continue to sponsor this Free Roll for Picks and Pivots readers with their awesome product that has the best roster flexibility in the entire DFS industry. Let’s run it back again tonight – congrats to all the winners we have had over the first two weeks and appreciate all the support on social media in spreading the word!
We may have nine games in total across the NBA today but Dallas-Houston starts at 6PM EST and is not on the Main Slate on FantasyDraft which kicks off at 7PM EST so go ahead and cross those guys off your player pool.
What stands out to me on this slate at first glance – is well, that nothing really stands out.
Of the games we have totals for, they all sit in the same 218-223 range which in this day in age of the NBA feels underwhelming as we are becoming used to multiple games a night with 230+ Vegas totals.
What really stands out for me though is that there does not feel like there is a star/stud that i simply have to have. Take LeBron James as an example – the highest priced player on the slate at 19K – who will play against Memphis in the lowest total game on the board (207 – yuck) while his team gets the largest pace decrease on the board.
If you do not want King James, maybe you pivot down to Karl-Anthony Towns ($17.9K) who will take on a Portland team this season he has faced twice and put up 34 and 30 fantasy points. Not quite hitting value huh?
Scroll down even further and you see John Wall and Bradley Beal who are two of the top 6 priced players on the entire slate and although the match-up versus Cleveland looks good on paper – this is the same match-up from November 14th where neither guard went for over 35 fantasy points as a result of a rare Wizards blow-out (well at least where they were on the winning end).
Without any real “must have” game to target or superstar to build around, this looks like a great slate to build around a balanced roster and simply look for guys that can all get you in the 40 fantasy points range with upside – so where should we start?
NBA DFS – Building with Balance:
The Knicks and Nets will face off for the third time this season with one of the higher totals on the board at 219 which would be well above the 211 and 212 game totals from their first meeting in a match-up in Madison Square Garden that Vegas expects to stay close with a 3 point spread.
As crazy as it sounds, this Knicks rotation is…gulp…starting to become predictable? OK let me re-phrase that – this Knicks rotation is starting to become predictable as long as you ignore the role players and bench guys and stick to the starting line-up.
Tim Hardaway Jr. ($12.9K) remains the constant for minutes and fantasy production in New York and he has excelled in this match-up already this season with 38 and 46 fantasy points against Brooklyn the first two times they played. Emmanuel Mudiay ($11.5K) has played 34, 35 and 36 minutes in his last three games with Trey Burke sidelined while averaging 35 fantasy points per game in that stretch.
Enes Kanter ($13.7K) has double-doubled in both meetings with Brooklyn because well its “Centers against Brooklyn” and that is essentially a foregone conclusion for any big man who gets minutes at this point. Kanter is averaging 22/13 in his first two meetings against Brooklyn while racking up 37 and 48 fantasy points against the Nets and remains one of the best GPP plays on any given night with 50-60 point fantasy upside when given the minutes.
Last but not least is Noah Vonleh ($10.4K) who after a brief slump, is back to playing 30+ minutes a night and showed against Boston what he is capable of in tough match-ups with 12 points, 10 boards and 35 fantasy points – to be clear, facing the Nets interior is far from a tough match-up.
On the Nets side, it gets a bit trickier especially when you consider the let down potential here after a huge home win against the Raptors last night where the starters got major run. There is always risk with running back any Nets player after they played 30+ minutes the night before – but with this being a “New York” battle, I expect them to come out energized as they try to build off the momentum of last night’s win.
As it always does with Brooklyn, it starts with D’Angelo Russell ($14.9K) who is the clear usage and FP/M leader with Caris LeVert off the court. Jarrett Allen ($11.7K) would be my next man in – as this duo was instrumental in beating Toronto as they combined for nearly 80 fantasy points last night.
This game may seem odd for stacking as it has the lowest pace on the board but also has one of the highest totals but it is loaded with mid-tier priced plays with demonstrated 30-40 point performances – both in recent games and in this same match-up already twice this season.
The other spot I am looking at for mid-tier plays is in Indiana as they play on the second night of a back to back against the Kings and all eyes will be on the status of Damonatas Sabonis who missed last night’s game due to food poisoning which gave us a surprise Kyle O’ Quinn night!
The Pacers have the largest point boost (7 points over their season average) and the second highest pace bump on the slate and we have the benefit of just seeing this game play out in similar circumstances (no Oladipo mainly). In that game Darren Collison and Myles Turner, both priced in the mid $12K range, went for 45 and 42 fantasy points respectively.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
The sample lineup shown here is NOT meant to be a plug and play lineup and is meant to be illustrative of the logic laid out in Picks and Pivots. My actual lineup may differ from what is shown here.
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G: Tim Hardaway Jr.
F/C: Enes Kanter
F/C: Noah Vonleh
F/C: Jarrett Allen
UTIL: Darren Collison
UTIL: Myles Turner
Slate Overview: As I mentioned in the open, this feels like a slate where the mid-tier and going more balanced becomes the preferred approach. None of the stars on this slate feel like must plays and without any huge Vegas data to sway us into elite game environments, maybe we just live in the mid-tier and look for guys that can get us 30-40 fantasy points with upside.
On FantasyDraft, the goal is typically to get to the 300 fantasy point mark for the cash line (and obviously that will fluctuate) but that means with a roster of 8 players, they need to average 37.5 FPTS per player and in GPP’s that becomes the floor we are looking for with the hope for upside.
In the build I have laid out, every player here has a path to that “target” of 37.5 and every single player has shown the ability to go for 40+ even in the exact same game scenarios they face tonight which gives me confidence in using this strategy both in cash games and in GPP’s tonight.
Enjoy your Saturday – get in that Free Roll – and let’s get our weekend’s started off right!
dark. Next. DraftKings NBA Picks - Saturday December 8
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